


the moon dragon and the starry maiden

by PaperBirdhouses



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Dragon Natsu, F/M, Fantasy, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, Starchild Lucy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperBirdhouses/pseuds/PaperBirdhouses
Summary: Far, far above him, she sways in starlight between devotion and despair.
Relationships: Natsu Dragneel/Lucy Heartfilia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	the moon dragon and the starry maiden

Long ago, there was a beautiful Maiden who had more love than her heart could hold, it spilled up into the skies, so her love was returned by the heavens, and was granted protection and wisdom beyond mortals. She dedicated herself to easing the plights of others. She attracted all manner of folk and creatures across the realm, all seeking her counsel and companionship. From the most noble of the Scarlet Warrior Clan to the most aloof of the solitary Frost Spirit, all sought the Maiden to leave her with hearts and minds lighter.

The Maiden, while traversing the Frostlands, was attacked and abducted by a band of lawless Ice Yetis, but was rescued in an act of whimsy by a passing dragon. The Dragon was injured in the scuffle, and so to repay him, the maiden nursed him back to health. 

He was at first unswayed by her beauty, but in the time his wounds had healed, she had whittled him down with her charms. Even the revered Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley, a being so elusive that people had scarcely even believed that he ever existed, was not immune to her magnetism. 

The Dragon knew the Maiden, and forgot solitude. 

The denizens of Fiore grew accustomed to seeing the Maiden accompanied by the crimson beast. Wherever the Maiden went, her Dragon was not far behind. The Dragon seldom bothered with speaking, but it was plain for all to see that he cherished the Maiden above all else. Rumors of the domesticated Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley and his Treasure swept across the continent.

Years passed, and people learned to smile and wave at the Dragon. He huffed at them and turned his snout capriciously, burying it into the dirt of the Maiden’s garden. In response she always gave him a firm thwack on the snout for uprooting her peonies. Her wrath failed to stop him from turning away from nosy villagers, at least at first.

The people of Fiore are persistent, and against his will, the Dragon’s fondness and protection grew beyond the Maiden onto Fiore’s denizens. He tussled with the Warrior-clan and Frost Spirit, and he indulgently held his head still as the Exceed of the Sky Plains danced and played games around his horns. He even bowed his head for the ancient Fae King and his grandson, the Great Thunder of Fae Woods. 

Being born into and for the sake of violence, the Dragon had never seen such a peaceful existence. The dragon takes a vow of neutrality, vowing, for the sake of the maiden, to never seek to harm another being. The promise proved to be short lived. 

Outside the quiet village and the outskirts of Fiore, a millennia-aged war still razed the land. One by one, each of their friends would march to war and would return having left parts of themselves on the battlefield. He watched her shoulders grow heavier with each scar the Scarlet-clan would suffer. The Frost Spirit’s Inner Freeze grew so weak that it was only by heavenly fortune that he had returned back to recuperate in the highlands before it had thawed completely. The Dragon saw that his treasured Maiden despairing at the suffering of her people. After a particularly harrowing scrape that the Fae King had only barely seen out of, the Dragon broke his vow of neutrality and set on a journey to bring peace to the realm on the Maiden’s behalf. 

She pleaded with him. “Please do not go, I fear the worst.”

He gave her a wide, impossibly sharp, optimistic grin. “You have no need to worry, I am the mightiest of all Dragons.”

“I know I cannot stop you.” She frowned, grasping desperately at a talon in resignation. 

He puffed a dry sigh onto her face and the tears gathering in her eyes evaporated. Her appalled expression was answered with booming laughter.

“Dear Maiden, we will be reunited soon. My word is my bond.”

Her lips quivered into an unsure smile and she nodded.

In a gust of wind he was gone.

Villagers still came with gifts for the Dragon, whole swaths of meat on bone, but his hulking frame was nowhere to be seen.

“He will be back soon,” she whispered hopefully each time they had wondered in his absenice.

“How long has it been?” someone asked.

The Maiden shook her head. “It matters not. He will be back soon. And all will be well again.”

They learn to stop asking, and by evening the Maiden is left alone to watch the sky for his return. She went to bed each night, heavy with a transient loss that faded by morning and is replaced with a renewed, naive hope.

One day, a wicked storm approached her haven.

“You are the one they call the Heavenly Maiden.”

A sorcerer, a malevolent practitioner of the most fearsome magic. A wretch of a man who does not live in harmony with magic, but consumes it for his own selfish means. Each act of magic is cast at the cost of the life of a magical creature. His cruelty is feared and abhorred by all true mages. 

The Maiden did not vainly puff and grin with pride as she usually did for such a compliment. But she stood from where she was tending to her morning glories. She shuddered silently, the sorcerer’s viscous aura was repulsive even at a distance.

“You will come with me,” he said fiendishly. “You will be mine.” 

Her knees shook, but she steeled her spine to shake her head firmly.

The man did not approach, for he could not. The Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley’s protection was carved onto the earth below the Maiden’s feet. 

He chuckled, a low grating sound, with amusement. “A dragon, using magic. How precocious.” 

A wretched magic, Domination, curled around the edges of her mind, and whispered in hushed, sinister tones.

_ Leave this place,  _ it commanded,  _ surrender yourself to me. _

The Maiden was swayed, but only for a moment. She gathered all of her strength and excised the magic. She gave the sorcerer a brassy, victorious grin.

The sorcerer’s face colored puce, the air around him shook and the trees creaked as their leaves whispered warnings of an imminent peril. 

“Insolence!” He thundered, the pulsing vortex of magic that surrounded him cracked the earth at his feet.

He said, “If I cannot have you, neither will Earthland!”

The sorcerer summoned a magic so powerful, cursed and vile, that it shattered through the Dragon’s protective magic.

“To the Eternal Flames with you!” he cackled.

The magic undulated gruesomely as it clutched at her limbs, dragging her ever closer to the gates of eternity. She scrambled fruitlessly, and tried to clutch at anything around her for purchase, all to no avail. She let out a choked apology and one final prayer to the stars. 

Miraculously, her prayer is answered, and a bright pillar of white light shot from the heavens. 

The sorcerer howled at the interference. He cursed at the Spirit King, and his hatred fuels him to twist the holy magic to suit his own whims.

“If you are so beloved by the stars,” He choked and gore speckled onto the ground before him, “then be united with your heavens!” 

The once pure magic of the Spirit King darkened and contorted into large, heavy shackles that bind themselves around the Maiden.

“No!” She wails, and feels the chords in her throat tear in her torment. “Curse you, Bora! Curse you!”

The sorcerer relishes in her anguish and guffaws cruelly in tandem with her shrieks. 

“This is your penance!” He was still laughing even demonic hands pulled him down to the depths of the Eternal Flames, his soul as a price for such a feat of Dark Magic. 

The magic shackled her on a high, high star. He had cursed her to spend all of eternity in isolation, far away from her village, her fiends, and her Dragon. 

When the Dragon returned, only the burn of the magic onto the flayed earth and the residual miasma of the sorcerer’s magic gave indication as to what had happened. He searched the surrounding forest and outskirts for any sign of her, until a villager who had seen everything finally spoke with him.

“She’s gone,” they said. “The Scourge of the Eastern Sea shackled her to the North Star.” 

The Dragon was furious, and the people of Fiore witnessed for the first time why he was known as The Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley. The resulting inferno was enough to burn the surrounding forest into dust. To this day, the Ash Plains stands a desolate blight among an otherwise lush verdant wood. 

His rage quelled when night fell, and so began the Dragon’s Vigil. 

He waited at the horizon every dusk, trying to catch even the slightest sight of her before she was ripped away back up into the endless sky.

He charged up into the sky, each time growing more desperate. Every time he tried to reach the stars, he crashed into the then pristine moon. He did this over and over until the moon became cracked and broken. The falling pieces formed the Tartarus Archipelago, and the largest jagged piece falls where Dragon’s Reach now looms over Fiore.

The Dragon’s wings become thin from overexertion, and are torn with mana burn. The moon too far for him to reach, he fell with each attempt to reach the sky. The impact of his falling body formed the craters that would eventually become the Great Lakes of Lophinia and Baginnene before he accepted that he could no longer take to the skies. 

He chased the stars up over the newly formed mountains until he reached the peak of Dragon’s Reach, where he stopped. He reached as high as he could, but with his wings tattered and broken, he could not do anything but watch the skies. 

Overtaken with grief all over again, and keened so loudly that the clouds around him shuddered from their natural course and gathered around him. Now, they swing in perpetual tempests around the peak in an unyielding storm. Since then, the Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley was never seen or heard from again. Though, some claim that while attempting to scale Dragon’s Reach, they could hear the guttural moans of a creature in incredible pain.They say that if you venture up onto the stormy peak of Dragon’s Reach, you would find the dusty, crumbled remains of the Dragon still keeping watch over the North Star.

The story of the Dragon’s Vigil was a story your mother had recited to you nearly every night before bed, just as her mother had. You are now grown past these silly legends, though. Still, that night you fall asleep with the window open to the stars, and you wonder if this is how the Dragon felt, watching a still, vast expanse, waiting and waiting. 

You wake, but instead of finding yourself in your humble village cottage, you find yourself in the most opulent hall you have ever seen. The walls are a deep golden color, decorated with meticulously crafted columns of golden marble carved along their lengths. The ceiling was nonexistent, and you can see an impossibly infinite number of stars sprawling as far as the eye could see. A section of the golden floor was a dizzying reflection, you had almost thought it to be a mirror or some kind, though the occasional ripple told you it was actually a river that bisected the hall.

To the opposite end of the river, you saw a shadow of a person, whose form you could vaguely recognize as a woman’s. The hood and mass of stars and cosmic rain which drifted around her where she stood made it almost hard to tell. Not too far from her, a herd of strange almost human-like white furred creatures stumbled over each other. You would have cooed at the sight, but you were in awe of everything else.

“You’re awake,” she said, her voice soft, honey on a soothing tea.

Inexplicably, you knew her to be the Dragon’s Maiden who was shackled to the North Star.

“This place…”

“Welcome to River of Stars, boundary between the celestial and corporal realm. Welcome, dear child.”

She may have smiled, but it was too small and she was too far for you to see it.

“I’ve brought you to this place to give you a warning.”

You nodded, your jaw still buried in the gold of the floor.

“The Mad Warlock, Zeref, has been brought back to your realm. Through heinous acts of dark magic, he walks among you, and is preparing to force dominion over all creatures of Fiore, so that the Demonkind who serve him may walk and terrorize our people freely.”

“Zeref?!” you yelp after you finally gather enough air in your lungs.

“There’s no way anyone could stop him! The only being that could would be-”

“Yes,” the Maiden says firmly. “The Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley.”

She clasps her hands in a pleading gesture.

“I ask of you, please ascend Dragon’s Reach so that you may reach the Dragon. He is your only hope.”

You gape again. Scale Dragon’s Reach!? It was easily the largest mountain of the land! She couldn’t be serious.

“I am sorry to ask this of you,” she mourns, and you immediately regret thinking anything poor of her.

You notice darkness creeping onto the edges of your vision.

“We are out of time,” she frowns. “Please, heed what I said, young mage. He is your only hope.”

You wake up in your cabin with a start. Your mother who was shaking you awake starts with surprise.

Before she could ask why you were talking in your sleep you interrupt her, sleep muddling your mouth.

“I have received vision from the Dragon’s Maiden!”

You mother squawks as you jump from your bed and begin to bustle around your home to gather necessary supplies to climb the mountain.

“You can’t be serious! That mountain could kill you! Nobody has ever made it to its peak! You can’t risk your life for the sake of a hallucination!”

You shake your head, somehow you knew that it wasn’t just some dream, and that the Maiden had in fact sought you out.

“I must do this, mother. It is my duty to our people.”

Your mother throws her hands to the air, cursing that you had followed in your father’s footsteps in becoming a guardsman.

You do not even wait for the next morning after your preparations, you immediately set off for the base of Dragon’s Reach. You grip your pack and begin your journey. It takes you two suns to reach the tempest at the peak. You grit your teeth and repeat the Maiden’s warning again and again, you thought of everything at stake, and somehow managed to pull yourself through the storm. After scrambling around the mountain, you had finally found a wide open cave for you to rest before resuming the climb. To your surprise, the cave extended far into the mountain, and didn’t end with a wall, but with a narrow path sloping higher into the mountain. Dreading braving the harsh rain again, you follow the path.

It winds and winds until it leads you to an wide cavern. You gasp. There, sat by the open face of the cave, was the Dragon. The light of the moon was not enough to cover his entirety. He is almost sewn into the cave itself, vines grow along his hide, and they continue to coil and snap around his eternal perch.

He barely acknowledges you, but you can tell that he’s noticed your presence. Now that you’re here, you don’t actually know what you’re supposed to say. You try to recall if the shadowy figure had given you any advice. You approach the side of the opening so you can lean out and get a glimpse of his face. 

He chuckles, the ground rumbles under your feet and you very nearly topple over the mountain, down into the still roaring squall below. But before you could plummet to your untimely demise, a resin-caked claw steadies you on the mountain with a practiced gentleness.

"You must think me a fool."

His voice is soft, its fissures running deeper with each word he spoke. Still, it has a quality of adamantite, an undercurrent that loans itself to the sound of a true warrior, that it draws your breath.

"How many years has it been..."

He hums is contemplation.

"She would know." The words slide from his mouth like they had been held behind his sharp teeth for millennia.

"She used to keep track of things like that for me."

It was difficult to see in the dark, but you could see a faint sparkle of mischief behind the waves of melancholy.

"Not that I ever asked her to." Suddenly the torches at the mouth of the cave light in a warm glow. You wonder who had bothered to leave torch holders in such a place, with an angry dragon who was likely to attack any intruder on sight. 

"You..." his neck cranes and centuries of dirt cascade along the crevasses of his scaled neck.

He looked like he wanted to say something. Something that weighed far more than the mountain and perhaps even the moon itself.

But he appeared to lose his fire.

You can almost see the traces of a smile in the depths of draconian amber when he faces you.

"Humans," he says, and the vines snap with a brittle sound as he rears his body to face you.

"They always do want to talk," he trails off as if he is recalling something.

He shakes his head and the movement disturbs the ivy that hangs above the mouth of the cave behind him.

He lays his claws on top of each other and sets his giant head to stare you levelly.

"So talk."

Words almost form on your tongue but they unravel before the sharp of his fangs and talons that are no less than four paces away from you. You instead scan his body, you scan his wings, doubtful that a dragon with holes mana tears on his wings could defeat the Mad Warlock. But his wings, while scarred and thin in places, seemed to have healed over the millennia. 

He senses your hesitancy, and asks you a question instead.

"Why did you brave the perils of this mountain, for this fool?"

You still cannot speak. The full attention of this immaculate beast is too much for you.

He rolls his eyes, and before you know what is happening, a bright blaze of fire blinds you momentarily. You rub your eyes and wrench them open to confront the Dragon for his cruel joke, but there was no such creature. 

Instead a man stands before you. He was dressed simply, and the only indication that he had any magical inclination was his pink hair.

“Why have you come here?” he asks again, his voice still carrying the same cadence of the Dragon, but had far less depth.

You could pretend that he was just a regular man.

“I have come to this mountain to ask for your aid, Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley.” The air is too thin up here, you think, you worry for the fire of the numerous torches that light the bare cavern.

The man stares at you silently, unimpressed. You swallow.

“The Mad Warlock Zeref, is preparing to wreak havoc over the continent. Only you are strong enough to stop him.”

"Zeref,” he says. 

The man narrows his eyes and flames curl around his teeth in a terrifying snarl.

"That is an old name." He spits, the embers burning the scarce vegetation at his feet.

"A hated name."

"He," you swallow, and the dry air nearly chokes you.

"He was revived." You can’t say any more, but you don’t need to.

"Dark magic." The ancient one hisses ferociously. His head drops down in frustration. 

"You humans and your dark magic!" He stomps to a cave wall and strikes his arm against it, it rumbles ominously. 

As you quake in fear, the fire around you spikes and claws for the cave ceiling. The man is panting, and you can see scales forming along his arms and back. The beginnings of leathery wings are forming at the base of his shoulder blades. 

"I do not know why you have come to me,” he says in a frigid monotone.

"I do not have love for humans," he spits. "Least of all mages."

"But," you say against your better judgement, "she was a mage, wasn't she?"

That seems to be the wrong thing to say. 

“I tire of your presence,” he snaps viciously.

“Leave before you wear out my benevolence.” 

The torches around you begin to flash erratically, and the dry air becomes so arid you choke on your tongue. His magic aura swells and engulfs and overwhelms you. 

You do not need to be told twice. You make a mad dash for the winding path. Nearly tripping over the downward slope multiple times, before you are met with the raging tempest once again. 

You barely make it to your cottage, you shake your head at your fretting mother before you collapse onto your bed. 

You open your eyes and you are in the Maiden’s hall again.

Before she can greet you, you sigh loudly.

“That Dragon didn’t listen at all! Wouldn’t even bother after I mentioned dark magic.”

You sigh childishly, but somehow, you aren’t embarrassed. Somehow, you feel like you can say anything to the Maiden and she wouldn’t judge you too harshly. 

The Maiden shakes her head mournfully.

"He always was stubborn."

She sighs, you notice that you are closer to the riverbed this time, you can almost make her face out if not for the hood. Stardust falls onto her clasped hands. As she moves to wipe her cheeks, you realize they’re tears. 

"I know him, after all.” She says with an awkward little smile. The small fades quickly. “Even if he refuses to see me."

"Refuses to see you?" Your face tangles in confusion. 

"Yes," she says sadly.

"He may be a brute, but he must know of how celestial magic works." 

Across from the celestial boundary, you wish you could do something to abate her sorrow, at least a little bit. 

"I can only speak to you, like this, at night. A star is brightest in the absence of the sun.”

She picks up one of the strange carrot nosed creatures that had all congregated at her feet, evidently more successful at easing her pain than you ever could be.

"But for all these years, he has never once allowed himself to sleep at night. He stopped chasing the horizon. He stopped trying to reach the moon.”

She pats at the creature's short white fur, and it makes a curious squealing sound. You think it is meant to be comforting.   


"This must be because he does not wish to see me.” She removes her hand and replaces it with her forehead.

“It must be because he’s so angry with me. I was so foolish, all those years ago, I had grown arrogant, and I am shackled here because of it.” The words should be muffled, but you can hear them clearly echo in the chamber.

"I am sorry, I had thought it was his love for humans that would spur him to fight. I thought it was that love fueled him to defeat Zeref all those years ago.” 

She sighs, watery and weak, combing back the fur she tousled.

"It seems I do not know him as well as I thought, after all."

"Y-you're wrong!" you cry, suddenly uncaring that you are in the presence of a divine child.

The Maiden halts in her ministrations then shakes her head with a smile you can barely see against the shadows of her hood, beautiful in its sorrow.

"They say it is sometimes kind to tell a lie, but you need not spare my feelings. I know-"

"I'm telling you that you're wrong!"

The Maiden does not speak. The cosmic storm around her head is still and terrifying. She almost does not breathe, and for the first time, you can see the stars sparkle from behind the curtain of darkness that shadow her face.

She seems hopeful. It spurs you on.

"All this time! This whole time, he's been looking for you."

This only saddens the Maiden, and the stars dim again. 

“Please say no more. I cannot bare to hear-”

"The Dragons Vigil!" You squeak, almost biting your tongue in your haste. 

"In my village the legend of the Dragon's Vigil has been passed for generations!"

"Every night, the Dragon keeps vigil over the night sky. He keeps searching for his Maiden. He has not moved for centuries, and has not slept through a single moonrise, he never, ever breaks his vigil!"

The Maiden is still frozen.

"Don't you see? The Dragon is still waiting for you. He has never stopped waiting for you!"

The stars above you lose their luster, you can barely see her shadowy silhouette.

"Is this true?" she whispers.

You nod.

All of a sudden, the stars around you blink and bluster with vigor, and the chamber shakes at an alarming magnitude. Then, the stars steady and light with the same warmth you distantly recognize from when you first met the Dragon, before he had expelled you from his mountain.

The shadowy figure laughs, the sound melodious and light. You are shocked to hear such a sound from a melancholy figure. Slowly, the veil of darkness is lifted from her shoulders, and you can almost see the curves of her face.

"What a stubborn, foolish dragon." Her voice is clearer than you’ve ever heard it.

The hood falls from her visage, and you are taken aback by her beauty.

Against your will, the words fall through your lips, “Dragon’s Treasure.”

The Maiden smiles brilliantly and you are all over again searching for your breath.

“I have not been called that for a long time.”

“I ask you, human mage, please go speak to Natsu again on my behalf.”

“Natsu…” you repeat.

“Yes, Natsu of the Scorched Valley.”

She smiles at the tremble in your lip.

“Fear not,” she says warmly, “he will not harm you.”

You find that hard to believe, but when she looks at you so earnestly, you cannot bring yourself to tell her of the enraged monster who chased you away from his mountain.

“I’m sure of it.”

She smiles mysteriously again, and you almost feel like you don’t have anything else to tell her that she does not already know.

“Just make sure that he knows that I sent you.”

She makes her way across the river of stars between you, her steps rippling constellations. She stands closer to you than any other person ever has, you think, and your pulse begins to quicken. The flush you can feel creeping up your chest abruptly washes onto your face as she cups your cheeks and pushes her forehead onto yours. All words fail you and you are drawn in by the unfathomable brightness that shines from her umber eyes.

“We offer this to you, young mage of fate,” she says, her tone is playful as she surely noticed the heat under her palms, “the blessing of the stars and heavens.”

The blackness creeps around your vision again, you’re waking up.

“Your name,” you say weakly, trying against all the forces of the universe pulling you away.

“Lucy,” she gives you a brilliant smile, you feel warm all over again. “My name is Lucy.”

You wake and you prepare once again to scale the Dragon’s Reach once more. You reassure your mother that all will be well soon, and all will be able to rest easy once you have secured the aid of the Dragon.

She gives you an exasperated look, but knows that there is no point in challenging your stubbornness. As you leave, she pushes a parcel wrapped in twine onto your chest.

“Smoked salmon,” she winks. “A Dragon’s favorite.”

The climb is less arduous a second time, now you know where to step and can plan your rests. The tempest rain buffet you, but through the clouds you can see the North Star twinkling its encouragement. You break through the cloud barrier and crawl your way into the cave of the Dragon’s Vigil once again.

You see the back of his hide, unable to see anything else past his enormity.

“Hey, Dragon!” you don’t think you should yell, but you are a little resentful that you had to climb an entire mountain twice.

The Dragon does not turn to look at you.

“You humans are tenacious, more tenacious than any other people of Fiore,” he mutters derisively instead.

“Great Dragon of the Scorched Valley, I beseech you,” you say, opting a more respectful approach. “Please, save us all from the Mad Warlock Zeref.”

The Dragon is still unmoved. “You all are of no consequence to me, your squabbles mean nothing.”

Recklessly, you raise your voice again. “It is not a squabble! The Mad Warlock is coming, and he will spare no living creature!”

The Dragon still does not move.

“That includes you,” you bite.

The Dragon puffs a great plume of smoke. You think it is meant to be a laugh.

“His majesty is welcome to try,” he says.

“Natsu! Please see reason.”

The Dragon is still, but the air around him is not.

“There is only one person who could possibly know my true name.”

The cave swelters and you wonder where your dauntlessness fled off to.

“She spoke to you.”

The dragon turns around, his great body dislodging the dirt of the cave walls around him. His snout hovers around your face, and a large, unnerving reptilian eye is trained on where the Starry Maiden imbued her blessing onto your forehead. 

“I smell her magic.”

The dragon grows as large as the mountain, you are afraid it would capsize and drown you in its debris. If the dragon himself didn’t see to your end first.

“You will explain yourself.” He bares his fangs, though he needn’t they added threat, you were already well on your way to soiled smallclothes.

You nod, trying to keep your teeth from clattering. “The Starry Maiden had sought me out, she used her magic to reach me in my dreams.”

The dragon shakes his head viciously. 

“Lies!” he bellows. “Why would she seek out such a puny insignificant little mortal like you?”

A talon thunders onto the cave floor, nearly crushing you in its wake.

“You mages are nothing more than a clutch of snakes biting each others’ heads so you live to see another miserable day of your lives,” he snarled. “Leave this place, you wretched, lying worm!” 

You think about your village. You think about your mother who would always leave a sweet roll for you after a patrol. You think of your comrades, who had saved your life from lesser demonkind a thousand times over. You think of the children who jumped around the market square, nagging at you and your company for a chance to swing your swords.

Boldly, you press on. “She says that you have love for all humans.”

The dragon growls, and you can feel the vibrations thrumming and shattering your skull into pieces.

“She says that she believes that you are the most noble of creatures, and that you can’t turn your back to those in need.”

Something catches in the Dragon’s throat, and you can feel excitement buzz around your gut.

“Please, Dragon! My village, my mother, all of the beings, both human and fae, nymph and sprite, we all need your help. We would all surely perish without you! Lucy promised me that you would fight for us.”

The Dragon slumps into himself, suddenly the weight of the past millennia crashing onto him all at once. You have him right where you want him. The Maiden was right, Natsu was just as soft as he was ferocious, you just need a little more-

“Lucy says-”

“Enough,” he whispers, and everything is quiet in the mountain. Faintly, under the howling gales, you can hear the ambience of the forest far, far below. A bright flash of fire, and the dragon stands as a man once more.

“Very well, human.” He doesn’t look at you, he is turned back to the open mouth of the cave.

“I will help you.” 

He takes a deep breath, then another. His seems like he is trying to glean something from far above, you do not think it is right for you to interrupt with the immense wave of gratitude that overtakes you. 

Eventually, his eyes stray from the bright of the North Star and he gives you a wide, toothy smile, it’s edges were strange and jagged, as if he had forgotten how to form the expression. Despite its malformation, it still fills you with a warmth that you think will never leave you. 

“Is that smoked salmon?”

**Author's Note:**

> ben_wyatt_it’s_about_the_yearning.png
> 
> so yes the blueball on their reunion is imperative, actually.
> 
> this has been in wip hell for like half a year just take it if there are typos there are typos. 
> 
> also if natsu and lucy seem kinda ooc its bc i wrote their dialogue intentionally stilted in that way that old fairy tales usually have their dialogue. i tried having them speak more loose and like normal people but it just looked out of place and i wanted to carry the aloofness of how fairy tales were written throughout the whole thing. idk lmk if you think i should have done differently. 
> 
> i might write more fairy tail, idk we’ll see. fairy tail is like the worst manga ive ever read (well, the last half, the first half is perfectly ok) but i really do like writing for it, i actually did some writing for the fandom under another name back in the day. i havent actually read much fairy tail fic in a while if anyone has some recs especially anything w magical/ supernatural stuff that would b v cashmoney of u


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